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108 koans as an oracle

Let us give you some clues about how these koans work as an oracle and how to use them so you can imagine how it all works. You will find out the details yourself since the oracle talks a bit differently to each person.

The first warning is: do not ask unimportant or foolish things and do not test the oracle because you will get senseless or misleading answers. You can have fun consulting with it but take it seriously at the same time. You can do this by choosing only one card (and another to explain the first one if necessary) or by pulling out more and lining them up on a surface or distributing them in some other way. You find the most appropriate way for yourself. However, the important thing is that you do it only after your question is formed clearly. And be aware of what you want to achieve with the answer. If your intent is not clear then the oracle cannot give you a clear answer.

Do not stick just to the words on the picture, but think about them thoroughly nevertheless. The text is just one part that forms a whole together with the picture and serial number. When it comes to numbers help yourself with some book on numerology and pay regard to what they mean to you. Namely, these cards work very subjectively. (Who else has as much information about you as yourself?) When you look at the picture try to be very calm and have a clear mind. And all the time bear in mind your question and its intent. Hold the picture in your hands, observe it, sense how it makes you feel. What is on the picture? What do the colors mean to you? What does the composition tell you? What do the picture and its details remind you of? Does it generally attract you or not?

So, get as complete an impression about the picture koan as pos- sible but do not forget about the question and its intent. Try to find out how your feelings and the messages are connected to your question. Air your feelings and discover!

We wish you many clear answers, right decisions and new encounters. And along with it a lot of fun.

Well, you can start now. So – what do you really want to know first?

MATEJA BARTOL

About the oracle

The need for help that the oracle can offer is as old as civilization itself, only the methods have changed with time. Predicting the future used to be a much appreciated ability and the oracles, seers, foretellers, prophets, or however we name them, were rare and most respected “chosen ones”. They were totally devoted to their work, they had a great amount of special knowledge and they were asked to advise even by most reputable people, army leaders and rulers. But today – at least in our part of the world – foretelling is understood as a slightly negative acting. This is due to many “false prophets” on the one hand and, on the other, due to the fact that this civilization only believes in rational arguments. But the way oracle works transcends the reasonable understanding because the oracle uses a totally different principle. Some call it intuition. C. G. Jung, however, calls it “a relative simultaneousness”. The prophecy is based on that which always is and never ends, since it is out-of-time. So, the oracle – based on the capability to see eternity where everything exists at the same time and where every thing is connected to all other things – knows the flow of happening and sees different aspects of a situation. That is what makes it possible to see and predict the future and understand a situation as a whole. And because of this complexity a valid explanation of the prophecy is necessary when a concrete answer to a question about a certain point of view in a situation is needed. Explanation can only be given by the one with a good insight.

Foretelling has always been a ritual act. Namely, a ritual helps a medium achieve a state that makes it possible to see the path of faith – which is the most common word to describe the eternal force that coordinates the life of a man and the whole universe. In the second millennium BC, for example, in Asia and also in some other places on Earth, bones and turtle shells were used as a tool for foretelling. While they were burning cracks started to appear on their surface. The patterns made by these cracks were the hints that helped oracles discern the message of divine forces and guide the questioners properly. From this tradition a famous Book Of Change (it is basically a kind of foretelling manual but actually it is much more) was created. It is based on hexagrams – columns composed of six broken or unbroken lines which are the abstraction of the cracks on the shells.

A ritual for this kind of foretelling was a sacred act. The consecrated person lit incense, sat down looking south (the South represents a bright light that increases clarity) and put fifty milfoil stalks in front of him or her (milfoil was believed to be a sacred plant). Then the oracle took the stalks into his/her right hand and made three circles through the smoke of the incense. The purpose of this was to let the question form perfectly clearly. After that a fairly complicated division and counting of the stalks began. At the end the result had to be interpreted. This demanded as thorough concentration as the ritual itself and in addition a great knowledge of the hexagram system. In ancient Greece, the oracles and temples were of greatest importance. People came there to consult with the prophets – the divine chosen ones. Priestess Pitia from Apollo’s temple in Delphi gave answers this way: she sat on a three-legged chair above the crack in the earth from which stupefying vapors were coming. Influenced by them she spoke unlinked sentences that expressed the will of god. The meaning had to be found by the questioner him-/herself. Ancient Greeks also saw the signs of destiny in the behavior of the birds, in the way they were flying for example. If a bird came from the left, flew high and so far that it disappeared from the viewer’s eyes over the horizon, then that was a good sign. In the opposite case the sign was a warning against unpleasant events or outcomes.

Today, the most common ways of predicting the future are reading from various cards, coffee sediment or someone’s palm, or visiting a clairvoyant who can see without these kind of instruments. And – just as today all knowledge is available to everyone in books and the electronic media – so the oracles are modified in a way that everyone can use them. How much people can get out of them and how deeply they understand them (just like with the books again), depends on each individual. To understand the oracle’s answer right at least one thing is necessary at the beginning – a clearly formed question. The right answer can only be given to a correctly formed question.

MATEJA BARTOL

Visual Koans by Miranda Rumina

When the work is done, we forget it.
That’s why it is eternal.
Khung Fu meditations

We could say that the latest work of Miranda Rumina reminds us of oriental art forms which do not need big gestures nor many words to tell great tales, or even better, to express deep truths. On the contrary, they are able to reduce the world of infinite forms and colors to a single sentence in which a well-considered message is hidden, or to a surprisingly subtle poem with extremely delicate expression. Whether it is a Buddhist koan, a Japanese haiku or a Khung Fu meditation – this refined aesthetic was never very close to our part of the world that is accustomed to narrativity and stories on a grand scale. Only in this last period – thanks to minimalism, new art practices and, especially, eastern philosophy – we began to notice, even in our society, artefacts that demand a different kind of attention, that do not tend to be just decorative or to be eternal in the physical sense.

Miranda Rumina has always combined different creative processes and artistic experiences; she has searched for the most appropriate way to express her restless inner life through various media. No matter what she undertook at a certain time, the contents or the message was always what defined the material form. It looks as though with these new works that it finally became clear to her that, with a growing number of pictures, objects and even photos, she is filling up a space that in its superabundance of visual impulses hasn’t been capable of the kind of attention a work of art needs for its contact with a person. She used the possibilities of modern technology and created the whole set – which was taking shape in Thailand – in a virtual place, with the help of camera, computer and the Internet. She transferred all of her previous experience with many media – among them there were also very traditional ones – into the world of chips, real landscapes into po- etic allegories, and messages, once hidden in shapes and colors, into witty, penetrating moments similar to koans. The origin of a picture was often found in the iconography of pop-artistic culture. Miranda has always been socially engaged in her art, sometimes provocative, other times involved in the spiritual spheres of life; in the newest images, us- ing a kind of modified photographic collage, she reveals herself mostly as a very innovative artist who can draw our attention to the dark side of life with relaxed humor. And maybe in these works, in their format relatively unambitious, she has succeeded in reasonably connecting her striving for the spiritual and her constructive view of reality as it simply is. With this she manages to capture not only the spectators’ gaze, but also their thoughts and feelings, and to allure them into the fairy-tale-like places of our seemingly dull reality.

JUDITA KRIVEC DRAGAN

108 Simple Koans in Picture and Word

To Dalaj

Something happened. Time ceased to exist – somewhere there, far in the east, where eternity mingles with the Indian Ocean and makes non-action possible. You become a hollow shaft of bamboo and disappear to make room for the invisible strings that start dancing their own dance.

Every day is a new day. People come and go, give and take. Nature is perpetually the greatest ally, and so is the digital western technology that catches a moment and silently transforms it into something new. The old and the new meet, knowledge resuscitates.

108 is a sacred number. Magical in all aspects and known in all cultures. Quality makes room for quantity. Art is not the maid of commercial streams. Ask a question and you will get the answer. Numbers also speak for themselves. The abstract mixes with the concrete. Planetarity is the basis of the new classic, and the matter has never sounded more thundering.

Life is more alive if death keeps watching it. Colors speak for them- selves, form cannot be caught. Thanks to all the models, thanks to the emptiness and to the fullness. Thanks.

The West, with the newest technology and knowledge, ennobles the East. It is a pleasure to hear the clap of one hand in the silence. And to flare up in silence.

Zen is the way, the path and the freedom within limitations.

MIRANDA RUMINA